Arvanitika, also known as Arvanitic, is the variety of Albanian traditionally spoken by the Arvanites, a population group in Greece. Arvanitika was brought to southern Greece during the late Middle Ages by Albanian settlers who moved south from their homeland in present-day Albania in several waves. The dialect preserves elements of medieval Albanian, while also being significantly influenced by the Greek language. Arvanitika is today endangered, as its speakers have been shifting to the use of Greek and most younger members of the community no longer speak it.
Noctes Pelasgicae, a collection of folk-songs, proverbs and lexical materials in Arbërishte, published by Karl Th. H. Reinhold.
Albanian is an Indo-European language and the only surviving representative of the Albanoid branch, which belongs to the Paleo-Balkan group. Standard Albanian is the official language of Albania and Kosovo, and a co-official language in North Macedonia and Montenegro, as well as a recognized minority language of Italy, Croatia, Romania and Serbia. It is also spoken in Greece and by the Albanian diaspora, which is generally concentrated in the Americas, Europe and Oceania. Albanian is estimated to have as many as 7.5 million native speakers.
Albanian within Indo-European language family tree based on "Ancestry-constrained phylogenetic analysis of Indo-European languages" by Chang et al. (January 2015).
1905 issue of the magazine Albania, the most important Albanian periodical of the early 20th century
Meshari of Gjon Buzuku 1554–1555
Possibly the oldest surviving Albanian text, highlighted in red, from the Bellifortis manuscript, written by Konrad Kyeser around 1402–1405.
